The rumors were true. Microsoft has announced a possible new Xbox Game Pass tier that will, if fully rolled out, allow subscribers to share their membership benefits with up to four friends. Currently the option is only being tested in Ireland and Colombia, but hopefully this is something that will expand to the rest of the world in due course.
Interestingly, while other ‘family’ plans (such as Spotify Premium) insist that you have the same address as the people you intend to share a membership with, this deliberately seems to be an offer intended to get friends and family separated by geography playing together. The only restriction is that they “must reside in the same country as you.” And even that might be down to the geographical limits of the current test.
So, what’s the catch? Well, aside from the fact that this is just a test that could fail, it will certainly cost you more money than a standard Games Pass Ultimate subscription, for one.
Microsoft doesn’t specify exactly how much more, but there are clues in the post. During the test, you can’t buy a membership but instead have to enrol in something called “Game Pass — Insider Preview.”
This converts your subscription “based upon the monetary value of the old membership,” and Microsoft says that a full month of Ultimate will be converted to 18 days of the new plan.
That’s undoubtedly a big price hike — especially if you currently only pay $9.99 a month for basic Xbox Game Pass — but a bit of a bargain if you know four other Xbox owners who are happy to split the cost five ways.
Nor is this the only improvement coming (or potentially coming) to Game Pass at the moment — as we've also reported recently, there's a new Xbox Game Pass widget coming to Windows 11, which will make it easier to see what's coming and leaving the PC version of the service.
